The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a play by Stephen Lowe, adapted from the classic working-class novel, by Robert Tressell.
[1] As with other Joint Stock shows, the project began with a workshop in which Lowe, Gaskill and the actors explored ideas and material for the play.
Lowe then worked alone for two months writing the script; finally, the company came together again for a conventional six-week rehearsal process.
The actors who took part in the workshop, and who also made up the original cast, were Bruce Alexander, Christian Burgess, Peter-Hugo Daly, Ian Ireland, Fred Pearson, Harriet Walter and Mark Wing-Davey.
Harriet Walter, who played the role of Bert (a boy apprentice), writes of the original production: "I had spent most of the evening under a table scraping out paint tins, and yet I remain prouder of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists than of most other shows I have been involved with.
"[2] Among the many positive reviews of Lowe's play, Irving Wardle wrote of the original production: "...it is an independent work of great skill and integrity, putting the original to the test of physical action and personal experience... for those who still find England blanketed with a thick fog of political evasion it is sheer pleasure to watch this lucid, beautifully organised account of the roots of our present industrial chaos.
In July 1983, John Adams directed the play at the Half Moon Theatre in London, with a cast including Josie Lawrence.
Stephen Daldry directed the play again in 1998, with a co-production by Theatre Royal Stratford East and the Liverpool Playhouse.
In 2011, Townsend Productions produced a two handed version of Lowe's play which is currently touring the UK.
[5] In 2010 Lowe worked with South African company Isango Portobello on a new version of his play, setting it in 1950s Cape Town.
The play is about a group of painters and decorators and their struggle for survival in a complacent and stagnating Edwardian England.
Since physical labour was so central to the novel, it played a large part in the Joint Stock workshop.
The company worked in the morning refurbishing an old warehouse as an annexe for Dartington College of Arts, supervised by a professional site foreman.
So the Moorish room episode, in which Owen is given the chance to use his skills to the full, is a key part of Lowe's play.
It’s them what’s holdin’ us back... Allers trying to do it proper.“ Hunter shouts at a terrified Linden – the oldest of the men – for taking too long cleaning down a door before painting.
One of them – Owen – is a socialist and he tries to convince his workmates that the cause of the poverty which they all fear is not foreign labour, overpopulation or machines but the capitalist system.
Instead, he is offered a special job of work, to decorate the drawing-room of The Cave in Moorish style (Mayor Sweater has seen something similar in Paris).
With labour and materials, they estimate that work on the Moorish room will cost about fifteen pounds; but they can charge Mayor Sweater forty-five.
Hunter just gives a few words of thanks; Rushton talks about how the men and the masters depend on each other, "the men work with their hands, the masters with their brains..."; and Mayor Sweater makes a political speech, attacking socialists, "Most of those sorts are chaps who are too lazy to work their livin'".
Crass and Easton work on a coffin; at Owen's house, Bert makes a child's wheelbarrow (a present for Easton's baby) while Owen paints a banner; Hunter reckons up the final costs of the Moorish Room, his obsession with numbers (the costs) scrambling in his mind with apocalyptic images from the Bible.
Philpott collects a coffin plate from Owen (it's for Linden's funeral - he died in the workhouse); Hunter, in the grip of his calculating/religious madness, cuts his wrists.
Harlow, sacked by Hunter after the Beano for his "far fetched ideas", comes to persuade Owen to come to a Labour meeting.